Almost certainly in response to the recent release of the Retina display-toting iPad 3, Microsoft has published details of how Windows 8 will cope with a huge range of screen resolutions and sizes, from the cheapest 1366×768 (112 PPI) laptops to 2560×1440 (291 PPI) tablets, and everything in between. At long last, Windows will gracefully deal with pixel densities above 96 PPI. Unfortunately, and much to the chagrin of dedicated, veteran Windows users, these much-needed fixes will only apply to the Metro interface, and not the conventional desktop.

Historically, Windows has been utterly atrocious at handling any display with greater than 96 PPI — but, until recently, this hasn’t posed much of a problem because displays with a pixel density over 96 PPI (the Windows default since the ’80s) have been few and far between. With the emergence of laptops that cram in 1920×1080 pixels into 14-inch displays (157 PPI), and the 2048×1536 iPad proving that tablets will soon have a PPI in 200s, Microsoft has been forced to make some changes.

Without scaling, the physical size of UI elements decrease as the PPI increases. On desktops with a mouse and keyboard (and assuming good eyesight), this doesn’t matter too much. The story is very different with touchpads (75% of all consumer Windows PCs are laptops) and touchscreens. To get around this, the operating system must zoom the interface — an icon that’s 32 pixels wide on a 96 PPI display must be scaled up to 64 pixels (for example) on higher-density displays. In the picture below you can see the effects of a PPI increase without scaling; as screen resolution increases, as does the difficulty of hitting a button with your finger.

In Windows 8, the Metro interface (the new Start Screen and Metro apps) will have three different “zoom” levels: 100%, which represents a 11.6-inch 1366×768 (112 PPI) display; 140%, which represents a 11.6-inch 1920×1080 (190 PPI) full HD display; and 180%, which represents a 11.6-inch 2560×1440 (253 PPI) WQHD display. Almost every desktop monitor falls into the 100% category (a 27-inch 2560×1440 display is only 109 PPI), while many laptops and tablets will use the 140 and 180% zoom. The Building Windows 8 blog post doesn’t mention the Desktop side of things at all, so it looks like it will be stuck with its current, crummy zoom controls.

As far as developers are concerned, creating a scalable app is easy: If you provide vector graphics, Windows 8 will take care of everything for you; otherwise, you just need to provide bitmap images for each of the three zoom levels. Windows will automatically manage the scaling of interface elements. It obviously helps that Metro is made up almost entirely of rectangles and typography, both of which are easily scaled.

In effect, Windows 8 will be doing exactly what iOS has to do when scaling up original iPhone and iPad apps for the iPhone 4 or iPad 3 with a Retina display. There is one fairly sizable difference, though: With the Apple devices, because of the fixed aspect ratio and screen sizes, the image simply has to be doubled in size (scaled 200%). This is easy to do and has no risk of causing any graphical anomalies. Windows 8 doesn’t have it so easy: If you scale a 32×32-pixel icon by 140%, you end up with 44.8×44.8 — which then has to be rounded up or down to 44 or 45. It’s the same story for 180%.

It might not be very noticeable with icons, but with more intricate layouts and especially websites laid out with CSS, the difference of 1 or 2 pixels can make a huge difference: Lines won’t meet up in the right place, navigation bars and text will wrap incorrectly, and so on. Even one of the simplest (and most common) elements, the 1-pixel line, would be forced into an existential crisis: does it remain 1-pixel, get scaled up to 2, or does it straddle the fence and become fuzzy and anti-aliased?

As for where this leaves the Desktop side of Windows 8, we’re not sure. What will Office or Photoshop be like on a 2560×1440 laptop, without proper interface scaling? Microsoft has made a lot of noise about the Ribbon UI taking over Explorer in Windows 8, but will that be usable at 300 PPI? The new, cut-down version of Task Manager (pictured above) — can you imagine trying to click those panels on a small, high-resolution display?

I didn’t get a notification for your first comment, so in all likelihood it was lost by Disqus. Unfortunate, but it does happen fairly regularly for some reason. It’s worth copy/pasting your comment, just in case.

Anonymous

Ah OK. Accusation retracted.

Anonymous

I actually posted 2 things the other day, and it disappeared too.

I think Disqus has had issues of late.

Anonymous

Apparently!

Anonymous

Get ready for a 17″ tablet, Sebastian. It’s gonna be the only way to click accurately. lol

Anonymous

Get ready for a 17″ tablet, Sebastian. It’s gonna be the only way to click accurately. lol

Anonymous

Unbelievable! Rather than adopting something sane (like using the EDID data from the display) and drawing everything a consistent physical size (rather than a fixed number of pixels), and offering zoom to allow the user to adjust it to their own preference, Microsoft decides that there is a three-sizes fits all approach…

As I commented before (which was mysteriously deleted) and will reiterate, this is an imaginary problem. Non-tablet users will almost never encounter a high (>100) DPI screen Windows Desktop app because those screens don’t exist for them. Similarly, tablet users won’t encounter the same because their devices are incapable of running conventional desktop apps.

Windows 7 handles high res (note, not high DPI) screens just well, and Windows 8 will continue that.

As I said before, you’re complaining about a hypothetical situation (a Win32 app on a high DPI screen) that practically doesn’t exist.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

So you think that desktop monitors will be stuck at 100 PPI, even while tablets and laptops move into the 300+ range?

Is there some reason for that? Or are you just looking at history? (Probably a bit silly, considering you can now see that 300 PPI is possible at 10 inches…)

Anonymous

Several things:

1) High PPI monitors are expensive relative to regular PPI monitors

2) The reason 2560×1440 at 10.1″ mobile screens work is the fact that they’re handheld, which make viewing tiny pixels easy. Try doing the same thing at desktop monitor range and you run into problems, mostly vision limitations

3) The point of high res screens in desktop usage is not increase the number of pixels per element, but to allow more elements on the screen so that, for e.g., you can work on 2 spreadsheets simultaneously

Combining 2) & 3) above: the motivation for high res is different for mobile and desktop. For mobile, it’s about close range visual crispness of the same amount of content shown on a lower resolution screen. For the desktop, it’s about showing more content than a lower resolution screen, period.

Because of the different motivations, screens that work for mobile don’t translate well into good desktop screens.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Cool — fair points — and hooray for your comment making it through in one piece!

http://twitter.com/jamezjay James Jay

Hooray for people having logical point-by-point arguments without descending into name-calling.

Paul Fischer

I appreciate your reasoning, but when applied to older eyes it breaks down. There is great value in using high DPI screens on laptop screens and desktop monitors in order to more accurately render, especially the text. The low DPI displays now being used were perfectly adequate when my eyes were younger, but now I find they are lacking.
There is definitely value to increasing the pixel density even on large displays, beyond just allowing “more elements” on the screen.

http://gordonkelly.com/ Gordon Kelly

Well time has been rather cruel to this line of arguments. Super high resolution laptops are now incoming and Windows 8’s desktop is in deep trouble. 2560×1440 11in and 13in laptops are landing all over the place at Computex 2013.

Anonymous

Several things:

1) High PPI monitors are expensive relative to regular PPI monitors

2) The reason 2560×1440 at 10.1″ mobile screens work is the fact that they’re handheld, which make viewing tiny pixels easy. Try doing the same thing at desktop monitor range and you run into problems, mostly vision limitations

3) The point of high res screens in desktop usage is not increase the number of pixels per element, but to allow more elements on the screen so that, for e.g., you can work on 2 spreadsheets simultaneously

Combining 2) & 3) above: the motivation for high res is different for mobile and desktop. For mobile, it’s about close range visual crispness of the same amount of content shown on a lower resolution screen. For the desktop, it’s about showing more content than a lower resolution screen, period.

Because of the different motivations, screens that work for mobile don’t translate well into good desktop screens.

ashish jagani

Using dell desktop maximum screen resolution is 1280*1024 but font and screen looks dull or fuzzy after installing windows 8. How to solve?

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